


Noise Complaint

by Duck_Life



Category: Original Work
Genre: College, Horror, POV First Person, Thriller
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-14
Updated: 2019-04-14
Packaged: 2020-01-13 10:31:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18467131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: A student can't stand her noisy neighbors throwing parties every night, so she takes matters into her own hands.





	Noise Complaint

**Author's Note:**

> I know this is not what I normally post to AO3, but I've been wanting to try my hand at writing short stories, especially horror stories. Let me know what you think!

I don’t expect you to understand. The cops certainly didn’t. But I don’t regret it, any of it, even though it landed me here. And I’d do it again. The thing is— I just needed to study, uninterrupted, unbothered. It’s not so much to ask. I had my flashcards all made up, and my notes were meticulously highlighted. 

It could have been perfect.

It was Thursday night. Everyone tells me Thursday is the new Saturday— I don’t see it. Some of us still have class Friday morning, and it’s not like you aren’t staring down the barrel of the weekend anyway. The end is in sight. Why party on Thursday? 

I was using the time to go over my vocab terms. I’d just sat down with a bag of Cheeto puffs and a stack of flashcards when the noise started.

“Noise” is maybe too small a word. It was a cacophony. It was hell.

It wasn’t just the music, although that was loud enough— the booming, thudding bass rattling every picture frame on my walls, the the throwback hits burrowing into my skull. Yes, the music was bad enough by itself.

But they were having such a good time upstairs that the guests, apparently, decided they needed to have a knockdown, throwdown fight. I wasn’t there, I didn’t see it, but it sounded like they were kicking off the walls, like they were swinging chairs at each other. It sounded like a stampede. At one point, I could hear the unmistakable sound of a cooler being knocked to the floor, sending cans of beer rolling across the hardwood. 

People were screaming, laughing, shouting along drunkenly to the music. I couldn’t hear myself think. The words on my flashcards swam before my eyes. 

I was rational, though. I kept my head. I called university housing security and filed a noise complaint. You see? I took the proper steps. I followed procedure. “I’m trying to study,” I told security. I gave them my apartment number and the number of the apartment above mine. 

Do you know what they said to me? They told me that, because it’s technically outside of university-enforced quiet hours, there’s not a thing they can do. And then they told me that if I really wanted to study, I should try the library. The library! At 10 o’clock at night, they told me to walk all the way back to campus and study in the library.

I should be able to do as I please in my own home, a place where I pay rent, a place I was told was meant for university students. Some of us came here to learn. Evidently, my upstairs neighbors came here to blast “Wagon Wheel” so loud it breaks the sound barrier. 

I tried noise-cancelling headphones. I tried banging a broom handle on the ceiling to get them to quiet down. They were so loud that my bed frame shook. They were so loud that the packets of popcorn in my pantry tumbled to the floor. 

I think they stopped around three. I don’t know, I was trying to sleep. When I got up and walked to class the next morning, there were still strangers loitering on the landing, looking hungover and reeking of PJ. 

Friday night was quiet. I was relieved. I actually managed to get some studying done and I thought, maybe, the reprieve would last.

It didn’t.

As soon as the sun went down Saturday night, those animals were at it again, stomping around, yelling, playing their music so loud it couldn’t even be classified as music anymore. It was just noise. It was just endless, deafening noise. 

I wasn’t going to sit in my apartment and suffer, not this time. I left. Got in my car and went to run some errands. Home Depot always clears my head. I got what I needed, and then I stopped at the grocery store to pick up a 12-pack of PBR. 

I didn’t think they’d let me into their party if I didn’t bring beer. 

And once I was actually up there, I must admit, it wasn’t awful. I joined in a game of beer pong. I danced with some strangers. I had a loud conversation with a drunk girl about her asshole of a boyfriend. 

Lucky for me, they were all too drunk to notice if the PJ tasted a little off. 

On Sunday morning, I woke up, made myself some toast and started going through my flashcards again. I’d studied about half the deck before I heard the sirens. 

The police were very thorough, and I’m not a career criminal. I didn’t know better than to hide the box of rat poison in the nearest dumpster. I guess I could’ve run, gone on the lam, but I did have a pretty big test on Tuesday. Couldn’t miss that. 

The arrest didn’t come until Wednesday afternoon. 

I don’t regret it. At least, I didn’t when I was first locked up. I have three roommates who are going to be able to study in peace now, not to mention the rest of the building. What I did was a public service. And while I did it for the public, I also definitely did it for myself.

All I wanted was a little peace and quiet. Was that too much to ask? 

I’m afraid it might have been. See, because I know that everybody at that party is dead now, dead as doornails. They got what was coming to them, and now they’ll never make a peep again. 

So why can I still hear them, just above my cell, pounding on the floors and banging on the walls, shrieking and screaming, laughing, having a marvelous old time? The boom-thud of their music and the grating sound of their cheers. 

I beat these walls until my fists bleed, just begging them to be quiet. But they don’t stop. 

They never stop. 


End file.
